Rookie weightlifter: Creatine built for bursts

Creatine is used to improve short, high-intensity athletic performance and, despite controversy, is popular and safe, according to studies.

May 09, 2012|By James Fell, Special to Tribune Newspapers

(Yuri Arcurs, Photographer's Choice)

When I was a rookie weightlifter, I took creatine supplements because everyone else was doing it. I quit after a week for reasons you don't want explained. Suffice to say it involved the words "gastrointestinal" and "distress."

Apparently that's a rare reaction, because creatine is definitely a popular dietary supplement for the athletic crowd.

The reason? It works. For certain types of sports, at least, creatine supplementation can make the different between a spot on the podium and a mention in the also-ran column.

Permission, prevalence

Athletic organizations such as the International Olympic Committee and the National Collegiate Athletic Association permit using creatine as a dietary supplement. A 1999 survey of 806 NCAA Division I athletes by researchers at the University of North Carolina and published in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine found that 48 percent of men used it (compared with only 4 percent of women). However, when the survey focused on strength and power athletes, the rate of use climbed to 80 percent.

A 2007 survey of 61 NCAA Division III athletes representing John Carroll University near Cleveland was completed as part of a graduate thesis, and it found 43 percent creatine use. It was most popular in football players.

Another survey of 1,349 high school football players published in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine in 2001 found 50 percent of 12th-graders taking creatine. It's popular in the weightlifting crowd as well; in the last 20 years creatine has become a staple on supplement store shelves. One 2004 survey, published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, showed that of 222 regular folks who exercised at a gym in New York, one-third of them had taken creatine, with 13 percent being regular users.

Specific help tendered

Creatine only enhances performance for certain sports: those involving short and intense bursts of effort. To understand this, you must comprehend the body's energy systems, but not the kind you'll hear about in a Deepak Chopra seminar.

There are three, and creatine only boosts one of them: the phosphagen system, which provides energy for intense, all-out effort that lasts less than 30 seconds. However, I must clarify that you can switch among systems during an activity. A basketball player, for example, can play for several minutes, but there are periods of maximum output lasting only seconds. Higher levels of creatine can help this athlete by providing extra cellular energy stores during such instances.

For a distance runner or cyclist, however, who engages in no short bouts of maximum intensity, creatine supplementation won't help.

Now think back to middle school biology and recall the parts of cells called mitochondria. Referred to as "the powerhouses," they generate adenosine triphosphate, or ATP — the fuel for maximum-intensity exercise. Creatine is a critical component of creating ATP.

If your cells are loaded on creatine you've got more ATP, which means more energy for maximum-intensity training.

We get creatine from foods such as meat and fish, but to make sure cells are saturated it takes supplementation. A 1996 study of 31 men published in the Journal of Applied Physiology found supplementation can increase muscle creatine stores by approximately 20 percent — where saturation is reached — and that this can be sustained with only a few grams per day. (Taking more than this leads to expensive urine.)

It's that saturation that leads to more short-burst energy, which leads to higher performance.

Because of the extra ATP you can lift more, complete additional repetitions, train harder, get stronger, build more muscle, etc. This allows you to make your muscles grow larger, gives you faster sprints and higher jumps, more powerful throws and harder punches. No love for the marathoner though.

"Anyone who comes to see me is already on creatine," says Alan Aragon, a sought-after nutrition consultant whose clients include not only bodybuilders and physique models, but the Los Angeles Kings, Anaheim Ducks and Los Angeles Lakers. "You get a good half-inch in girth everywhere from creatine. Your arms will fill out T-shirts more. Being on creatine can really stroke a guy's ego."

Aragon did mention that some of the size comes from creatine also pulling water into your muscle cells. Beyond the added bulk, this hydration has an added bonus of increasing protein synthesis into muscle tissue.

I heard it wasn't safe

There have been debates about creatine's efficacy and safety, so let's clear things up.

Some question the safety of the supplement, asserting potential cramping, dehydration, liver and kidney damage as well as potential drug interactions, but Aragon states, "Creatine has shown an amazingly consistent safety profile even after dosing people with a (high) loading dose for months and months."